helvetica

We watched a good documentary last night called Helvetica. It is on the surface about the history of the ubiquitous font, but once you get into it you realize that it is more about the people who are the typesetters, graphic designers and general font aficionados who care about things like the height of the ascending portion of your lower case d and how much white space there is in side the lower case a. For any armchair designer, this is a great look into the minds of these people. The font itself is both praised and vilified in this film and I think for the most part the criticisms are spot on. Some of the best quotes come from the naysayers in the film, especially Eric Spiekermann. I personally like Helvetica, especially when one wants to give a clean, well organized look to some text. Lastly the soundtrack , mostly instrumental post rock by El Ten Eleven, fit the clean feel of Helvetica perfectly.